Thanks to Whatfunny for the review! The musketeers will be more present in future chapters. I just have to get Elizabeth to the point where she needs them!
In this chapter, Elizabeth's heartbreak is renewed and a plot around her begins to thicken.
Chapter Five - 28th June 1632
"I'm not going with you Eric, when you next leave Paris."
"Don't talk nonsense Elizabeth!" Eric cried. "What; you're going to stay here alone? Or are you going to take up rooms in your father's house? Is this some scheme of his eh? Some scheme that he's plotted in which you stay and he gives you whatever you want? He wouldn't give you money would he; because of me? I heard you coughing into the night. No money for your tonics?"
The cold laughter was harsher on Elizabeth's ears than any other sound he had ever made. "I didn't take his money because he spoke ill of you. You are my husband and I am a loyal wife. I'm not going with you because I'm sick of all of this travelling Eric. I'm sick of always being on my guard, tired of having to leave with sometimes only a few moment's notice! Think of how much money we've wasted in new things because so many times we have had to run with only the clothes on our backs. You know I've been ill and all of this travelling about is not helping me. The doctors have said so too."
Eric sighed heavily and moved to take a seat beside Elizabeth on the couch. "Paris does not strike me as the best place to try and recover a little if that is what you really wish Elizabeth! If you'd like I can rent a house in the country somewhere; anywhere you like. That way you won't be forced to live under the city smog. Cities are dirty rat infested places. The country would be better for you!"
Elizabeth clenched her hands into fists where they lay in her lap. "Don't you understand anything I try to tell you Eric? I do not feel up to travelling into the country! I do not feel well at all! I want to stay in Paris and spend time with my father! I want to visit the bathhouse as the other Parisians do and I want to make some real friends. I want to have a home for a while! I can't keep your secrets any more Eric. I can't go on as we have been all these years. I am still your wife legally but we are not even friends any more. You slight me at every opportunity and take pains to ensure I am always locked up wherever we stay. I have no one to talk to, no one who is purely there to listen. I've tried so hard to be a good wife to you Eric, but I'm struggling here! Can't you see that? Can't you see that all this stress is not helping me to get better?"
Eric stood and paced the room as Elizabeth spoke, and she was sure he would have some smart comment to make once she had finished. "Has your father put you up to this to throw my nose out of joint? What, so you want an annulment, a divorce? What?"
Elizabeth stood too, feeling at a disadvantage when Eric could shout over the top of her head. "I don't quite know what I want in terms of our marriage Eric. If I thought you'd return to the young man I married then I would of course be prepared to try and work things out, but I fear that man is gone forever! Don't you recall those happy days we had at home in England? All those wonderful summer afternoons spent running around the lawns of Barnham house? You and I, and Harry and all of the others? I married you because of who you were back then. You're just a shell now. God I think even Harry is a better prospect than you now in some respects!"
"Oh go and have Harry then if you really want to!" Eric roared as his anger began to swell. "I know he'd not say no, but then he never has to anyone! God Harry's the biggest whore I know! If you want to be used and tossed by the wayside then go to him!"
"I don't want Harry!" Elizabeth exclaimed as Eric turned on his heel and headed for his bedchamber. "I never did, that's why I married you!" She stopped in the doorway and watched as Eric tore off his shirt and threw it onto the floor uncerimoniously. He grabbed another from his opened trunk and stuffed it over his head and pulled it down. He threw a doublet over his shoulders and grabbed a stiff collar to pin to his shirt and stormed past Elizabeth, nearly knocking her over in his haste to leave. "Where are you going?"
"To find a bloody drink and a card table!" was all the reply she got before the parlour door slammed and she heard Eric clattering down the stairs. A few seconds later, the door to the lodgings was slammed too and she was all alone. She did wonder at Eric hoping to find a card table so early in the morning, but then Eric always had a knack for smiffing them out.
If Elizabeth had felt strength enough to go after Eric, she still wouldn't have done so. She was forever apologising for her husband when quite often she was not entirely sure what he'd done wrong. Getting drunk and playing cards at this hour of the day would only increase the chances of him finding someone else to antagonise. Then they would be back at square one, trying to justify their right to stay in Paris. Elizabeth had already decided she was having no part in any of it. In order to remain inculpable she would need to distance herself from Eric in every way possible. She did not want to break from her husband if she did not have to, for it would do no good for her reputation at all. If she left the lodgings they currently resided in and took up another, people would certainly begin to talk though. She truly did not know what to do and was suddenly very eager for her father's advice. Although she resented him awfully for the fact she'd spent fourteen years of her life without contact with him, she appreciated that he did love her in his own way. He'd kept himself alive by leaving England, for if he had stayed he would surely have been killed. In a way he had ensured that he could still exert some influence for his children. If he had given himself up though, ELizabeth's pregnant mother would not have been locked in the tower with her two sons. They would have been questioned and released to live their lives as they pleased. Her brothers would be married themselves by now, and her mother might even have married again. There was no right way to think of how things should have been. All Elizabeth knew in those moments were that her father was close by, and she should be making the most of his company after being seperated from him for so long.
The walk to her father's house seemed somehow much longer that day than it had been two days before. Perhaps it was because Elizabeth knew that she needed to apologise for her previous behaviour in the hopes that her father would consent to help her. Deep down she knew he would. What father could not feel guilt at having left his family to such a fate as residing in the Tower of London? Surely it must have plagued his mind since the moment he heard that his family had been captured. He had not even seen Elizabeth until long after her sixteenth birthday, when she was already married to Eric and grieving the unborn child that she had lost. It was a strange occurence to be within the presence of her own blood and to have never met them before. It had taken a long time for Elizabeth to forgive her father for abandoning them all, and even longer before she understood why he had fled. His constant letters were a great comfort to her because she and Eric were not often in Paris at all. Everything felt easier by letter too, because sometimes Elizabeth felt awkward around her father who tried to be the model parent when he had in fact only known her for six of her twenty two years. Letters forwent the awkward glances and silences, and gave them both time to think of the most appropriate reply.
The little house keeper let Elizabeth in as she too returned from a walk. On her arm she held a basket of fresh bread and meats. Elizabeth declined the offer of a chaperone to her father's study and bid the housekeeper to go about her work. She did not want an audience for her apology. The house did not feel different as she made her way upstairs and towards the study. She stopped at the turn of the staircase where she glimpsed the small yard at the back of the house from the tall window. Elizabeth shook her head in exasperation and disbelief. Her mother would not have consented to her father taking such a house. There was no garden for a start. Her mother loved gardens. She loved the grass underfoot and the flowers and the birds in the trees. she loved fresh air, which she got very little of inside the tower. Her mother had now sat out two boughts of the pestilence in London and Elizabeth marvelled that the woman had survived with such a poor constitution.
Elizabeth did not realise that something was wrong until she was half way accross the room, approaching her father's desk where it appeared he had fallen asleep. The dark doublet had disguised most of the blood but from yards away there could be no mistaking it for red ink. It was splattered across the scrolls of parchment on the desk, had even reached his feathered quill on the left of the table and matted one side of her father's head. He was leaning to one side in his chair, his face a vacant expression of nothingness. The pistol was clutched in his right hand as if he might spring back to life and wave it before them. For moments there was silence as Elizabeth froze in fear, not entirely comprehending what she was seeing. Her father was formidible to say the least. He had fought so long and so hard to maintain his good name, to secure a life for himself in France that it seemed such an erratic action for him to take his own life.
There was the sound of the door opening downstairs and of voices in the hallway. Elizabeth came to her senses as she realised that visitors had likely arrived to meet her father. The meek little housekeeper would be about to see the worst sight of her life. Elizabeth spun around, making for the door in haste to stop anyone else witnessing the outcome of her father's last act and also because she needed to be free of the room. If she were outside again she could pretend that it had not happened, that he was still waiting inside to greet her and hear her apology. She felt the tears welling in her eyes as she reached the door and barrelled through it to pull it shut on the other side. The housekeeper threw her a questioning look as she turned into the corridor and shuffled on past her, leading the visitors towards the room. Elizabeth could barely see for tears and barely walk as her determination left her.
She grabbed the houskeeper's wrist just as the woman would have passed her and would not let go. "You cannot...do not go in, do not see!" Elizabeth sank to her knees and felt the housekeeper stooping to try and help her up.
"D'artagnan, check the room!" It was with the voice that Elizabeth realised that the visitors were the musketeers. At length the four men left the corridor and entered her father's study and Elizabeth still sat on the floor, unblinking and unmoving. the cold crept in around her as shock set in and her limbs grew so stiff that the housekeeper could not pull her from the floor and into a chair. She tried to focus on the voices within the room to keep her mind working, her heart beating as the cold floorboards beneath her seemed to roll and float. She forced the dizziness away and managed to put the palms of her hands flat on the floor. She pushed herself up off her knees and back into the chair behind her, where she sat for an age. Tea was pressed into her limp hand but she set it on the floor behind one of the chair legs so as not to spill it. Someone left, to go and fetch the English ambassador she thought. The housekeeper was questioned by first a musketeer and then the English ambassador when he arrived but not one looked twice at Elizabeth.
Some of her men her father did business with arrived after a few hours and Elizabeth watched in growing alarm as they all traipsed into her father's study. there was an increasing nausea present as Elizabeth finally stood and ventured towards the doorway again. She did not want to see such a sight again, but she would have to in order to tell all of those men to leave. Her father's death was not some attraction for them all to view as entertainment. This was not the King's menagerie that they could visit for only three sou. Her weary feet took her over the threshold and into the freezing study, where men were conversing in small groups.
"Is there a need for such an audience?" Elizabeth asked the English ambassador. "Sir I understand that you must be here but these men are not even friends of my father's. They simply did business with him."
The man shrugged. "Some say they are owed money."
Elizabeth felt a spark of cold anger. "Well they may consider what they are owed, put it in writing and I will ensure that they receive a full repayment upon the amalgamation of my father's estate. This is not the time or the place! There is nothing here that may be sorted through today. Is a woman's grief of no consequence nowadays?"
The English ambassador opened his mouth to speak but he was interrupted by the gruff voice of the sullen musketeer who Elizabeth had a great dislike for. "The Madame is right, Mon seigneur ambassadeur. Under city law this man's estate must be calculated and his will read if there is one, before any benefactors may come calling. They cannot harass family members in a time of grief-"
"They are harassing no one!"
"I believe their mere presence is distressing this man's daughter Monsieur!" Athos nodded at Elizabeth and she did not know whether to thank him or throw him a look of contempt for daring to speak in her place. "I am sure if you wish to meet with the Madame you may make an appointment which she will be glad to uphold but as of a few moments ago this death was agreed upon as suspicious. Therefore the Madame is a witness and I cannot have you or anyone else distressing or influencing her. I need you all to leave. Apply to the Madame in writing for your appointment." He turned to Elizabeth then. "This is agreeable to you Madame?"
Elizabeth opened her mouth to reply before she even knew what her reply would be. She was accustomed to having decisions taken out of her hands by her husband, and here was a stranger willing to do so for what was as yet an unknown reason. The look that the musketeer settled Elizabeth with told her that she should heed his words. She nodded stiffly, sure that if she opened her mouth to speak her tongue would give her anger away.
"Oh very well Athos," the English Ambassador sighed. "I'll send these men back to their offices, but I will require a report of your findings before the day is out. Madame, please do not think any actions of mine or these men here presumtuous. We are indeed very sorry for your loss."
With that he had left her side, and he shepherded the other men out into the corridor. Elizabeth turned back towards Athos with an angry retort on her lips, but it died there when she saw the far away look in his eyes. "They are vultures," he said quietly at last. "They will not give you a moment's peace Madame. Have your lawyer write up a retainer to keep them at bay for a few weeks at least."
So he had stepped in to preserve her time of mourning. There was something decidedly odd about the grumpy musketeer. Elizabeth shook the thought away. "You said there was something suspicious here. Are you permitted to tell me what?" His eyes yet again told her multitudes without his ever speaking. He'd lied about that too. Was it odd to wish that someone had harmed her father, for there were many that wanted to, rather than the tragedy being a taking of how own life? "I suppose you will need to get my account of all of this?" she asked blandly.
"Not today." His curt reply was in-keeping with his previous forms of speech. He clearly did not like her much, but was prepared to do the gentlemanly thing regardless. "We shall call upon you at a more convenient time when you have had time to recover yourself."
"I don't need to recover," Elizabeth replied. "I'd rather that you took my account now if it's all the same. It's fresh in my mind now. I have a habit of forgetting the important details sometimes, what with being ill and tired. I am at my most helpful now Monsieur."
The musketeer nodded once and Elizabeth told him how she had come upon her father and that she had not seen anyone suspicious in the street below. She told of how her father seemed of his usual spirits two days before and showed no signs of despair. Elizabeth walked the room to show him where she had stopped, indicating that she had not touched the table at all or any of it's contents. That was when she noticed it. It was indescribably hard to look, but look she did. Elizabeth gazed upon the prone form of her father and his glassy eyes that stared at nothing in particular.
"Perhaps it is suspicious after all," she murmured.
"How do you mean?" Porthos asked her from behind the table.
They were all looking at her then, and Elizabeth felt suddenly foolish, as if her very valid point had no use in such company, but she persevered. "Perhaps gentemen, you may wish to include in your report the inconsistency that appears before us. I do not claim to know a great deal of my father, apart from what I have from him in letters. I love him as a daughter does a father but there are a great deal of things I do not know about him. I do not know where he likes to walk, what wine he likes or which room he likes to sit in of an evening. All of these physical things are lost to me. Before today I did not even know with which hand he wrote. Perhaps you might try to explain to me how on earth my father writes with his left hand and shot himself with his right?"
There was silence as all four men turned their gaze upon the table. Sure enough, there was ink to be found on her father's left hand, from which he had produced some form of writing earlier that day.
Soooo, is Elizabeth's father ambidextrous or did someone kill him?
Please favourite/follow/review!